The present invention has application to industrial sewing equipment for automatically controlling sewing patterns and particularly to automatic pocket setters.
There are a number of automatic pocket setting machines currently used in the apparel industry. These machines are designed to handle nearly infinite numbers of patterns within certain limits, which are set by the size and design of the machine. Instead of being infinitely adjustable due to the economic and practical reasons, all automatic pocket setting machines are broken into two groups of components: 1. Changeable, 2. Permanent.
1. The "Changeable" group of components is designed for a unique pocket pattern/style and size. In general, every time a new pocket style, or size is to be processed on the pocket setting machine, a presently mounted group of these components is dismounted and a new group is mounted in its place. This group consists of the following components:
a) Pocket folding assembly, or better known as "Pocket Folding Group". It is a mechanical assembly designed to fold a pocket and set it on an apparel item (e.g. shirt front). PA1 b) Pocket clamping and/or transferring assembly commonly known as "Stitching or Transfer Clamp". It is a mechanical assembly designed to clamp folded pocket on an apparel item and either transfer, and/or retain it during the sewing process. PA1 a) CNC program, also referred to as "Pocket Part Program". This program is designed to control the motions of the components (motors, cylinders, cams, etc.) involved during the sewing process. This program usually resides in the machine's programmable controller in an Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EPROM), or in the memory of the controller itself. The machine operator, during a Style Group change, must either select a new program from the controller's memory, or physically change the EPROM. The combination of the Style Group and the Part Program is designed and developed as a set, per customer's specifications.
The above assemblies are better known as the "Pocket Style Group".
2. The "Permanent" group of components (not changeable) is designed to provide a support frame with work surfaces, operator controls and assisting fixtures, as well as motor drives, machine's main controller and sewing head.
Although the above described arrangement of Permanent and Changeable components has been found to be the only economical and a practical design solution to the automatic pocket setting, it has a serious inherent problem. If during the style change, the operator selects or plugs a CNC Part Program that does not match the newly installed Style Group, than a mismatch between the Stitching Clamp (which has a fixed machined path) and the CNC program (which controls the motion and the path of all axis during sewing) will result in potentially serious damage to the equipment, as well as costly machine down time. The present invention provides an economical solution to this problem.